Well, how about some positive news to end this day? How about annoying the heck out of the Business Software Alliance? There's a new proposal for a directive on consumer rights in the EU, and in it, digital goods - software, online services, and so on - are explicitly defined as goods that are no different than any other good - like bread, watches, or cars. In other words, you would suddenly own the copies of software you buy, effectively declaring the EULA as a worthless piece of paper. Surprise - the BSA is not happy about this.

> The BSA argues that it is impossible to deliver software without bugs. In addition, the BSA states this would mean software makers would no longer be obliged to release patches and updates.

The BSA is throwing a lot of straw-man arguments around here. If I buy a book and some of the pages are missing, I return it for a refund or a replacement. Same with software.

As for patches: the software company is not obliged to release patches or updates now (unless it's part of a support contract). It's just that many do as a way keeping users sweet. Any company which neglected to release at least security patches would soon find their customer base dwindling. Some (many?) proprietary companies already charge for upgrades which include security patches and others just push you onto the next version anyway. Is this any different to a 2nd edition of a book?

It's pretty obvious their concerns are to do with the fact that once we own what we "buy" we can do what we want with it (including reverse engineer it?). In some ways this turns intellectual property back into just property. For FOSS this is great news, for proprietary houses it's the opposite.